Old Masters
by witchofnovember
Summary: JoshLeo "You don’t have the past. You have the future.”


Author's Note: This is a response to a challenge – two characters and a line of dialogue to be used in a story.

He found Josh sitting in one of the side lounges, staring vacantly at the painting on the wall. It was a copy of a copy of a copy of an old Master who was now probably rolling in the dust of his grave at the results of his admirers. The room was neat and sterile, in the fashion of most hotel lounges, but the man inside was anything but.

His posture was slumped, shoulders down, as if he were simply waiting for the next blow to come so he could absorb it and move on. Leo could see the lines etched in his face, the shallowness of his cheeks and the pain around his eyes.

"Hey," Leo said from the doorway.

Josh didn't turn, didn't acknowledge the other man's presence, just continued to stare vacantly at the wall.

Leo walked into the room and took a chair slightly off to the side. He studied the younger man and was pained to see that the fire, the kinetic energy that always seemed to exude from him in waves was gone. On one hand, he could count the number of times he had been witness to this sadness from this man. And each of those times had taken a small bit of Leo's heart away.

"You should be in there, you know," he said softly. The only reaction this elicited was a small dismissive wave of a hand. "Really, your guy needs you."

Josh smiled wanly, "He's got plenty of keepers right now. He'll be fine."

Leo sat back and sighed heavily. He knew of the fight in Toby's office from earlier in the day, knew what had prompted it on both sides. Both were in the wrong, but he was no longer their father or their boss and could only watch helplessly as they fought each other for some sense of independence from the legacy they knew they carried.

"You know," Josh started, "I didn't think I'd feel so..."

The words wavered for a bit and Leo sat forward in his seat, trying to catch out of the air the scent of the conversation.

"Outside," Josh continued. "That's it. I've been trying all day to find the word that fit. Outside. I've never felt so outside of things." Turning to Leo, he said quietly, "You know, I couldn't even get in the door this morning? They wouldn't let me in."

"Josh..."

"Seven years, Leo. Seven years I spent there. Almost every waking moment, and some sleeping ones, too," he smiled, a wan, thin smile. "I'm gone for a few months and I can't even get in the door. I can't get in the door and my friends, the people I counted on, are selling me out."

"Josh, you know..."

Josh turned, his eyes brilliant with pain, "I don't know, Leo. I knew. I thought I knew. I thought that the White House would be the one place that none of us would have to worry about. Bingo Bob wouldn't get any help from there, and even though it was offered, I wouldn't take any help from there. It would be off limits and sacred. And he ruined that. He took what was sacred and sold it."

Josh lowered his head and studied his hands. "There's nothing left but this. Nothing but this campaign. Everything else is gone. CJ, Toby, you..."

Speechless, Leo sat back in his chair and rubbed his face. What do you say in the face of abject loneliness?

"It's not gone, Josh. You have people."

The laugh was hollow, "People? Yeah, I've got people. I've got staff and volunteers and college kids who don't even know the names of all fifty states. I've got people."

The eyes came back and looked at Leo, "It's not the same. You know, I've tried to think of what you would do, what you would say, when things got tough. That was my saving grace."

"You can't compare yourself to me, Josh. Things are different, the circumstances were different."

Nodding, Josh replied, "Yeah, you had me and Sam and Toby and CJ and ..."

The name was left unspoken between them.

Josh looked back up at the painting, his shoulders slumping a little further, his breath a little more labored.

"When Jenny left, did you miss her?"

Leo eyed him curiously. "Yeah."

"What did you miss the most?"

"Oh, God, I don't know. The way she would bring me a cup of coffee in the morning. The way she put her arms around me when I crawled into bed at night... things like that."

Turning his head, Josh said, "After she was gone, did you ever feel..."

"It was like fighting gravity, Josh. Every morning, it was like a huge weight was sitting on me and I had to fight it off to get out of the bed and get moving. That always happened after that one slight moment when I first woke and I thought she was still there."

"Does it ever go away?"

Leo studied him for a moment and thought about his answer. Slowly he stood and made his way to the door. Turning, he said, "You aren't me and she isn't Jenny. Don't fight the gravity, Josh. You don't have to. You don't have 35 years of marriage behind you, you don't have the baggage that we carried. You don't have the past. You have the future."

Looking at the older man for a moment, Josh stood and straightened his jacket. It seemed a moment of understanding had passed from one generation to the next and Leo, once again, had stepped down into the hole to help out a friend.

"I guess I need to go check on my guy."


End file.
